fiscation and re-confiscation of their lands, on pretences the most ridiculous and unjust:-these were, a love of independence, attachment to their native chiefs strengthening as their fortunes fell, and a correspondent hatred of foreign domination, still. Hence, at the commencement of those horrid scenes of blood at which we have but this moment glanced, and wish to do no more, reflecting as they do equal disgrace upon Protestants and Catholics---and it was the former, it must be remembered, upon the testimony of Lord Clarendon their friend, who first massacred by thousands their fellow-creatures in cool blood---the Catholics of the pale offered to bear arms against the insurgent Catholics without, whose ranks they were ultimately driven to join, by the foolish and wicked threats of their rulers to exterminate their faith. The time, we rejoice, has long since gone by, when the reflections to which this rapid view of the past history of Ireland will give rise, might be dangerous; and that, we hope, has arrived in which they may be useful. We wish not to dwell on the past and irreparable wrongs of a generous, a high-spirited, but an ill-governed nation, further than may be necessary, from that which has been done, to gather lessons of wisdom in what remains for us to do. We shall not longer delay, therefore, entering on the discussion of the causes and remedies of the existing distresses of Ireland, than by confirming our outline of her former condition, by the following animated sketches from the first of the pamphlets placed at the head of this article, which has been attributed, we believe most correctly, to Mr. Croker's pen, in whose language, rather than in our own, we gladly complete, also, this preliminary view.

"From the date of the English establishment in Ireland, first effected, afterwards extended, finally secured, by domestic treachery and the foreign sword, there was, till the last century, no civil government! The king's deputies, and the deputies of the deputies, were strangers and soldiers, needy and tyrannical; their duty, conquest; their reward, plunder; their residence, an encampment; their administration, a campaign! The capital and a small neighbourhood, emphatically called the English PALE, acknowledged the theoretic existence, but enjoyed not the practical benefit, of laws. As the superior arms or arts of the settlers changed turbulent neighbours into rebellious subjects, the PALE was enlarged; but they had no laws to dispense, no civilization to communicate. I will not wade through the blood of a continual rebellion and intermittent massacres, nor through recriminations nearly as odious, and retaliations quite as bloody. Prized should the land be, every foot of which has

been fought; and fertile the country, manured by the indiscriminate slaughter of her sons and her step-sons! Suffice it to say, the riotous discontent of the half-subdued drew down the suspicious severity of the half-established, and this protracted and barbarous struggle effected by degrees the degradation of both.

"We pass over the alternate ravages of Charles and Cromwell, to arrive at the almost Theban contest of James and William-the lawful, but intolerant and intolerable possessor of the throne, and the unamiable, but the enlightened and necessary instrument of his expulsion. Of the Irish, there had been no Religious Reformation; illiterate, they could not find their own way; and poor, they had little to tempt the missionaries of Henry the VIIIth: all, therefore, in Ireland, that was Irish, was Papist; almost all that was English, was Protestant. James was a Papist and William a politician, much more than they were Christians. The blind devotion of the former recommended him to the love and loyalty of the natives, while it exposed him to the fear and enmity of the settlers. Hence a war, perhaps not yet concluded; and feuds, confessed to be unextinguished. Offended, neglected, and despised by their respective princes, the two parties evinced a generous attachment to their fortunes. But the greater merit is here with the adherents of James. He, to insult and neglect of his followers, added weakness, and meanness, and cruelty, and cowardice, and defeat; while William---though the friend only of Holland, and the enemy of Ireland ---was a conqueror and a hero, had won three kingdoms, and deserved to win them. Between such men, it was not fortune that decided; the courage of James fled at the battle of the Boyne, and even his hopes expired in the treaty of Limerick. By conquest and by capitulation, the triumph of William was complete; as complete, at least, as he desired. Ireland indeed was not tranquillized, but his throne was secured. With war enough at home, she had none to invade the shores of her neighbour. William seized her as an outwork of England, as he took Namur for the safety of Holland.

"But though James had abandoned the Irish, the Irish had not abandoned James: against his undisturbed predecessors, they had maintained desultory but implacable war; to him, expelled and outlawed, they exhibited, as were their character and custom, a perverse loyalty like their perverse rebellion-blind to its object, and atrocious in its measures. While James and his power lingered in Ireland, he assembled a pseudo-parliament. He had chosen the members; he chose the measures-1st, the act of repeal, justifying all rebellion, breaking all faith: 2d, the act of attainder, proscribing thousands by name, and millions by inference: 3d, the act for liberty of conscience, licence to the papists, hardship to the reformed. The whole closed with the subversion of established institutions, dilapidation of churches, spoliation of bishoprics, denunciation, plunder, and oppression of the whole Protestant community. From the Papist, thus lately tyrannical, now subdued,

the Protestant thought it justifiable to subtract all power. Obsolete penalties were revived, and new restraint enacted—of their ambition from the senate, their partiality from the magistracy, their force from the field:-that influence, often misused, should not be regained, possessions were forfeited, acquisitions forbidden;-that disaffection, as it was natural, should be impotent, weapons of offence were stricken from their hands, and the means of resistance removed, as its causes were multiplied. The retaliation was complete; not so its justification. William had ratified the articles of Limerick, and broke them;-a policy useful to him and his near successors, fatal to us; ensuring temporary tranquillity, and lasting dissension. Contempt would have extinguished the Popish superstition, proscription has perpetuated it." [pp. 3-7.]

"Where the warfare of the nations ceased, that of their Parliaments began: the English to assume new, or to assert ancient superiority; the Irish to deny the latter, and to resist both.-A supremacy more complete than she dared to claim as of right, England now established by influence-a courteous name for profligacy on one side, and prostitution on the other. Hence a degraded population, a hireling aristocracy; a corrupt government; hence the low intrigues, meanness, and misery, of three generations. From the reign of William to that of George the III-a long pause in the annals of our turbulence-during two jacobite invasions, while half England was hesitating, and Scotland had treasonably decided between the Protestant prince and Popish pretender, Ireland was But this is tranquil; in allegiance sullen, perhaps, but unbroken. all the historian has to tell; the rest was the squabble of petty pretenders to power, unimportant even in its day, contemptible in age, and ours; youth became sank into the grave in silence and ignorance: for our glory nothing was achieved, for our improvement nothing attempted: almost a century is almost blank." [pp. 8, 9.]

age

The temporary independence of Ireland, achieved mainly by the extraordinary exertions of the flower of her orators, though not the best of her statesmen, who, in the language of the sweetest of her poets," sat by its cradle and followed its hearse"-the disastrous Rebellion of 1798, and the Union, are events too recent to need our notice here, usefully as they may be referred to in the progress of our remarks. We pause not at them now, and we may not pause; for in considering the ignorance, the poverty, the political debasement of the lower orders; the non-residence of the clergy, of the great landed proprietors, of the nobility; the tithe system; the religious bigotry; the mode of government, as the chief causes of the present distressed and alarming state of Ireland; and in suggesting some measures for the removal, or at least the diminution of these evils, we feel most

sensibly that we have work enough upon our hands, more perhaps than it will be expected that we shall accomplish. The effort, however, will be made; and we shall be abundantly satisfied, if it is as kindly received, as it is well intended.

On the evils of ignorance,-the advantages of education,it would not only be indulging in common-place remarks, but offering an insult to our readers to dilate. In Ireland, the first are now exhibiting in all their horrors; the latter are but in the commencement of their operation, and if that operation be not accelerated, the weeds will, we fear, speedily choak up the small portion of good seed, which private benevolence has scattered by the way-side. We say private benevolence, because the legislature and the government have as yet attempted little for the furtherance of this grand object; and what they have attempted, has frequently been productive of more harm than good. But before we proceed to the illustration of this remark, or enter on our detail of grievances, it may be well to give a portrait of the people in whose welfare we are interested, and for whom we wish to interest our readers, and the legislature, drawn by the hand of a countryman; yet drawn, we think, with correctness and impartiality.

"Its popular character and customs distinguish and disincline Ireland from England. Varieties have been sought in the national disposition, referable to the double origin of the Irish people; in vain: however differing in rank, party, or ancestry, they bear the indelible mark of a common nativity. Restless, yet indolent; shrewd, and indiscrete; impetuous, impatient, and improvident; instinctively brave, thoughtlessly generous; quick to resent and forgive offences, to form and renounce friendships; they will forgive injury rather than insult; their country's good they seldom, their own they carelessly, pursue, but the honour of both they eagerly vindicate; oppression they have long borne, insolence never. With genius they are profusely gifted, with judgment sparingly; to acquire knowledge they find more easy than to arrange and employ it: inferior in vanity only to the French, and in wit superior, perhaps, even to the Italian, they are more able to give, and more ready to receive, amusement than instruction; in raillery and adulation they freely indulge, but without malignity or baseness. the singular temper of this people, that they are prone equally to satirize and to praise, and patient alike of sarcasm and flattery. Inclining to exaggerate, but not intending to deceive, you will applaud them rather for sincerity than truth. Accuracy is not the merit, nor duplicity the failing, of a lively but uncultivated people. Their passions lie on the surface, unsheltered from irritation or notice: and cautious England is too fond of recognizing the Irish

It is

character only by those inconsistencies and errors, which her own novercal government has contributed to produce or perpetuate.

"In their domestic life, the gentry and traders differ from the English of equal rank, not in essentials but in modes. Here are less neatness and economy, more enjoyment and society. Emulative profusion is an Irish folly. The gentry would rival the nobility; the merchant affects to surpass, and the shopkeeper to approach, the splendour of the gentry. Hence patrimonies are dilapidated; hence capital is diverted from business to pleasure: the profit of one enterprise is not, as in England, embarked in another, but sunk in a villa or an equipage. The English trader bequeaths, the Irish enjoys; but his enjoyment is not often elegant, and seldom secure. The nobility and affluent gentry spend much or all their fortunes and time in England; leaving their places to be filled-in the country, by hired agents-in the city, by a plebeian aristocracy; the former, solely engaged in increasing and collecting rents, can have little conciliatory power with the people; and the influence of the latter tends rather to increase than diminish the political danger. A great evil. Not because the country is drained by remittances, but because she is widowed of her natural protectors. The loss is, not of money, but manners; not of wealth, but of civilization and peace.

"The condition of the peasant was of late utterly, and is still almost, barbarous. What the Romans found the Britons and Germans, the Britons found the Irish-and left them: the neglect of the conquerors, the degeneracy of the colonists, and the obstinacy of the natives, have preserved, even to our day, living proofs of the veracity of Cæsar and Tacitus; of this, many will affect to be incredulous-of the Irish, lest it diminish the character of their country of the English, because it arraigns the wisdom and policy of their system. But the experienced know it to be true, and the impartial will own it.

"The cultivator of the land seldom holds from the inheritor; between them stand a series of sublandlords and tenants, each receiving a profit from his lessee, but having no further interest or connexion with the soil. The last in the series must provide for the profits of all-he therefore parcels out, at rack rents, the land to his miserable tenantry. Here is no yeomanry, no agricultural capitalist; no degree between the landlord and labourer; and the words "peasantry" and "poor" are synonymous.

"Their dwellings are of primitive and easy construction-the walls and floors of clay, the roof of sod or thatch; within, are two unequal divisions; in the smaller, filthy and unfurnished, you would hardly suppose the whole family to sleep; in the larger, on a hearth, without grate or chimney, a scanty fire warms rather by its smoke than its blaze, and discolours whatever it warms. Glazed windows there are none, the open door amply sufficing for light and air, to those who are careless of either. Furniture they neither have, nor